How to BeeHave on Social 🐝

 

My first newsletter back after a well earned Christmas break and I’m already talking about food 😂

Honey... I friggin love the stuff. 

Smear it on my toast, whack it in my porridge and dollop it in my coffee.

Like a certain Pooh bear I can't get enough of it. But where does Honey come from?

That’s right, bees 🐝 

I have had a romantic notion for a while of keeping bees and collecting my own honey. There is something so inherently fascinating about them. 

I’m becoming slowly obsessed with the little blighters. So much so that I now have a mountain of bee books to get through and the wife has booked me in for my first beekeeping course in March (can you tell I’ve hit middle age).

It’s the collective that makes the hive, just like social!

See, everyone of your employees have the power to initiate conversation.

But unlike bees it’s your collective uniqueness which allows you to go deeper and broader than you can with just your brand (the queen). The hive is collectively stronger than the queen and collectively more powerful than even a competitor twice or even three times your size when you get this right!

I could draw obvious parallels between the honeybees waggle dance (Bees communicate flower location using special dances inside the hive. One bee dances, while other bees watch to learn the directions to a specific flower patch. The dancing bee smells like the flower patch, and also gives the watching bees a taste of the nectar she gathered) and your prospecting strategy, there are opportunities and deals out there you have no hope of unearthing without having more conversations. But how do you get people to talk to you? By being social. Sharing your hopes, tribulations and struggles through your content (as well as your expertise) creates empathy and allows people to WANT to move towards you and talk to you. 

A far cry from your current outreach strategies I’d say.

Bees also inadvertently help cross pollenate flowers by collecting that all important sweet nectar. They become natures ultimate Amazon delivery drivers. Just like your staff do on social. See they end up selling your companies culture better than your marketing department ever could through employee advocacy content. By b(e)eing themselves. Not forced, just telling it like it is, as naturally as a honeybee pollenates, you’ll have flowers of all kinds of colours, shapes and sizes beating your door down wanting to join your team.

I also didn't realise that male bees (called drones) are bred purely for reproductive purposes. They serve no purpose other than to mate and eat honey (sounds alright doesn't it). 

They don't collect nectar and can't even eat without assistance from the female worker bees. During severe winters male drones are driven out of the hive in Autumn, where they promptly die in the harsh conditions. A patriarchy this ain't!

Turns out there are a lot of similarities between beehives and human social networks too!

Physics PhD student Sang Hyun Choi ran a test

By barcoding bees to see if there were any social patterns between groups that emerged. Outlines reflect whether a barcode could be decoded successfully (green), could not be decoded (red), or was not detected (no outline). The hive entrance is in the lower-right corner, and the inset reveals two bees that were automatically detected performing trophallaxis.

Image from Illonis education department article

"We developed a theory for this based on a very simple idea: if a bee is interacting with another bee, you can think of that as a sort of "virtual spring" between them," said Goldenfeld. "The strength of the spring is a measure of how attracted they are to each other so if the spring is weak, then the bees will quickly break the spring and go away, perhaps to find another bee with whom to interact. If the spring is strong, they may stay interacting longer. We call this theoretical description a minimal model, because it can quantitatively capture the phenomenon of interest without requiring excessive and unnecessary microscopic realism. Non-physicists are often surprised to learn that detailed understanding and predictions can be made with a minimum amount of descriptive input."

But bees shouldn't be left alone, they need love, guidance, support and care just like your team do on social. To prevent them being overrun with pests and encourage the best flow.

So they can leave the hive and take flight in the first rays of the early morning sun and go search for that all important nectar to make you that sweet, sweet honey!

See you next week for more Electric dreams, I’m buzzing off for now 🤓